Shakespeare's Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance

by Pascale Aebischer

Looking at the violation of bodies in Shakespeare's tragedies, especially as revealed (or concealed) in performance on stage and screen, Pascale Aebischer discusses stage and screen performances of Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear. Aebischer demonstrates how bodies virtually absent from playtexts and critical discussion (due to silence, disability, marginalization, racial otherness or death) can be prominent in performance, where their representation reflects the cultural and political climate of the production.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academic

236 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2004

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But while the tragedy’s survivors mourn the loss of Lear, my outrage at the ending concentrates on the void left by the erasure of alternative viewpoints, alternative protagonists."

This brilliant book, focusing on how various directors, actors and (often) actresses have done with Shakespeare's underwritten parts (the women, the racialised 'Others'), brings our attention to how versatile these texts are, and the astonishingly different readings directors have come to.

Starting with the Gravedigger's Daughter in a 1990s RSC production of Hamlet, moving through Lavinia, Tamora and Aaron in Titus, through Gertrude and Ophelia, to Lear's daughters, the astonishing range of interpretations imposed on these texts reminds us how powerful Shakespeare has made his underwritten and ignored parts: it's one of the things we don't see when merely reading these plays, what the silent people are doing, how they are responding, what are they seeing?

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was that rare combination of quality scholarship and enjoyable prose. Aebischer has a lovely sense of humor as she goes through the production histories of Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Titus. It is not comprehensive history though, mainly focusing on late nineteenth and twentieth-century performances. Instead, it is concerned with showing how performance shapes meaning in fundamental ways. Her readings are quite good, especially in her analysis of film adaptations of Othello.

I think it is probably accessible for most laypeople. The only thing that might put some off is when she lays out her theoretical framework in the introduction.